Beau Lebens Posts at Dented Reality

Author Archives: Beau Lebens

I am Beau.

Stroll in the Park

May 14, 2012 – 11:24 pm

It is now 12:04am, and I just got back from a walk. There are a few things about this walk to make it notable: I got up from my desk at 11:35pm and headed out for a brisk walk, mainly so that I could try to get over 6,000 steps today. I measured my steps [...]

Posted in Personal, Techn(ical|ology) | Tagged fitbit, fitness, keas, mugging, quantified self, RunKeeper, walking |

Closing a Window in JavaScript

May 8, 2012 – 9:21 am

If you’re having trouble closing a window using JavaScript, this might help. I’ve had this problem sometimes in Chrome in particular when I open a window, then follow through a bunch of redirects or something. It seems to lose track of the fact that I “control” this window object, so it doesn’t allow me to [...]

Posted in Techn(ical|ology) | Tagged chrome, javascript |

WordPress Authentication Framework: Keyring

March 19, 2012 – 7:48 pm

Quite a while ago (like, in at least 2009), I started thinking about regaining control of all the content I was producing online. I was posting photos to Flickr, saving bookmarks to Delicious. I started Tweeting. I was checking in. All fun and games, and all of those services offer great tools for interacting with them [...]

Posted in Projects, Techn(ical|ology) | Tagged authentication, delicious, digital hub, flickr, http basic, oauth, plugin development, plugins, twitter, web services, wordpress |

Timbuk2 Command: Probably the Best Messenger Bag. Ever.

March 4, 2012 – 5:04 pm

I’ve had or tried a bunch of different messenger-style bags in my time, but I may have come across the Perfect Bag™. The Timbuk2 Command has all sorts of neat features and extras that make it suit me absolutely perfectly. Here are a few highlights:

Posted in Personal, Reviews | Tagged bag, laptop bag, messenger bag, shoulder bag, timbuk2, tsa |

A Random Idea Around Small-Group Collaboration

March 1, 2012 – 5:22 pm

I use CloudApp a lot, and recently saw mention of Dropmark. That got me to thinking of a relatively simple, WordPress-powered application for small-group-collaboration which I thought I’d throw out here in case anyone wanted to build it. A WordPress installation, with a group of people who all have accounts A small Mac/Windows app that [...]

Posted in Techn(ical|ology) | Tagged cloudapp, collaboration, dropbox, dropmark, guppy, lazyweb, wordpress |

First Siren Net Checkin

February 7, 2012 – 12:48 pm

In October 2010, as part of my NERT training, I attended a “HAM Cram” class here in SF and gained my FCC HAM license. I picked up a Yaesu VX-7R radio and then tinkered around a bit, but never really got into HAM too much more than it just being a fun idea. Since then [...]

Posted in Personal, Techn(ical|ology) | Tagged emergency, ham, nert, radio, san francisco, yaesu |

Camping on Angel Island

December 1, 2011 – 2:40 pm

Over the Thanksgiving break, some friends and I went camping over on Angel Island, in the San Francisco Bay. It’s quite a unique experience, camping in amongst so much city/so many people, yet being so isolated. We caught a ferry from SF over to Tiburon*, and then another from there to Angel Island. Once on [...]

Posted in Personal | Tagged angel island, camping, island, san francisco |

Mounting Remote Filesystems in OSX

December 1, 2011 – 8:42 am

Most of my work for Automattic is done on a remote sandbox machine, somewhere in Texas. I’ll often jump in and make smaller edits over SSH via vi, but when I’m doing something bigger I much prefer to work locally, using TextMate (I’m on a Mac, obviously). To do that, I need to be [...]

Posted in Techn(ical|ology) | Tagged automattic, development, fuse, macfuse, macfusion, sftp, ssh, transmit |

On Internet Addiction and Connectivity Bubbles

November 10, 2011 – 12:23 pm

If there’s one thing that travel has done for me lately, it’s made me recognize and accept how addicted and reliant I am upon my smart phone (in my case, an iPhone). When you travel (internationally), you have to make a hard choice — do I shell out big $$$ to AT&T to get an [...]

Posted in Personal, Techn(ical|ology) | Tagged connectivity, internet, travel |

Wakemate vs Fitbit: Sleep monitoring and the quantified self

November 9, 2011 – 10:12 pm

A while back, I got a Wakemate and was pretty gung-ho about it being a great device for monitoring your sleep and helping you feel a bit more refreshed when you wake up. I recently picked up a Fitbit as well, so as a bit of fun, I thought I’d compare the 2 devices for [...]